Webinar video archive

Oracle Exadata & In-Memory Real-World Performance

After a short introduction into what the Oracle Exadata Database Machine is, in this one hour webinar Oracle expert Randolf Geist will look at an analysis of different database query profiles that are based on a real-world customer case, how these different profiles influence the efficiency of Exadata's "secret sauce" features, as well as the new Oracle In-Memory column store option. Based on the analysis different optimization strategies are presented along with lessons learned.

In Fill the Glass episode 2, Cary welcomes Enkitec engineered system specialist Martin Bach. In this action-packed hour, Martin will guide us on a tour of the magnificent collection of Oracle Exadata internal technologies commonly called Smart Scan. Martin will demonstrate the wondrous differences that Smart Scan can make, show how it works, and give you a peek under the covers at how everything is instrumented. Of course, Cary and Martin will discuss your questions along the way.

A SQL Performance Problem Seek and Destroy — Mostly Destroy

Karen Morton

December 5th, 2014 - 10:00-11:00 AM CST

It’s usually not difficult to find SQL that is performing poorly. The hard part is what to do with a bad SQL statement once you have it. In this session, Karen Morton will show you how to use a simple method that is reliable and repeatable for solving any problem SQL statement you might encounter.

This is an interactive session. Ms. Morton will begin by reviewing a problem SQL statement that she has chosen to illustrate the method she’ll demonstrate. But the star of this show will be you. We invite you to join brimming with questions that will extend the content of the lecture and demo.

Oracle Database In-Memory in Action

Join three of the brightest minds in the industry: Cary Millsap, Kerry Osborne, and Tanel Poder, for a one-hour webinar as they discuss the revolutionary technology of Oracle Database In-Memory, an in-memory column store that does not slow down the OLTP components and is compatible with all existing applications.

Application design patterns offer developers reusable solutions to common problems. In enterprise applications, the Master / Detail pattern provides end users with an intuitive and efficient means to work with data models that have header records with one or more detail records. Oracle APEX has included native support for the Master / Detail pattern for a while, but for some people it’s not enough - they need Master / Detail / Detail.

Empower your databases with an Oracle Exadata machine

Join Martin Bach, Enkitec's EMEA Practice Director and author of multiple technical books, for this informative webinar showcasing the benefits of an engineered system. Martin will present real-world examples of organisations revolutionising their business with never before seen system performance, reliability and availability, delivered in particular by the Oracle Exadata Machine.

Continuous Integration and Test Driven Development of Database Schemas using Jenkins and Redgate

12c Adaptive Optimization

One of the most interesting new features of the Oracle Database Optimizer is its ability to recognize its own mistakes and use execution statistics to automatically improve execution plans. Oracle calls this "Adaptive Optimization" and this talk will focus on how it works.

Using Cross-Platform Transportable Tablespaces to Reduce Downtime

A little known MOS note describes how you can potentially reduce downtime by a significant amount when migrating databases between systems with different endian-ness. Many sites are looking for ways to move their databases from big-endian platforms such as HP-UX, AIX, or Solaris/SPARC to an Exadata system running Linux. In this webinar, Martin Bach will explain how implementing a cross-platform incremental backup in conjunction with cross-platform transportable tablespaces makes this possible.

Instrumentation and Source Control: Time to Act

There are two things that people are often aware they should do, but don't: instrumenting their application and source controlling their database.

Diagnosing application defects – especially performance defects that affect response time or throughput expectations – is surprisingly easy if you design the diagnostic features into the application from its inception.

Source control enables you to deploy changes from development, to test, and on to production in a controlled and consistent manner, gives you the ability to revert to a previous version, and tells the story of your development.

In this session, Cary Millsap and James Murtagh will discuss why you need to source control your database and instrument your code, and demonstrate tools that have been designed to make this easy

How to Enable Risk-Free Database Experiments

Application developers frequently experiment to achieve higher quality builds. They try things out, make mistakes and find fixes. Database design can be like that too, but rapidly changing the schema in a traditional, shared environment tends to break the application.

In this webinar, Kyle Hailey will explore how different types of cloning technology work and their benefits and limitations. The webinar will also demonstrate how you can set up and coordinate risk-free database experiments using Delphix and Redgate's Oracle tools.

Performance is a Feature: Here is the Specification

To many people who build and run software, "performance" is a side-effect, an afterthought of designing and building "proper" features like buttons that book orders and reports that explain profitability. But great performance at scale doesn't happen by accident. The first step to great performance is to remember what performance is: it is the answer to the question, "What have people been experiencing?" Knowing what people experience when they use your software is possible only if you treat performance as a proper feature – a feature you analyze, design, build, test, and maintain.

Topics in Database Version Control

In this webinar, database development expert Dominic Delmolino discusses some of the nuances of database version control in today's distributed development environments. Topics will include the pros and cons of personal vs. centralized development databases and how Oracle 12c may enable the best of both worlds. Dominic will also talk about branching database structures in a fashion similar to code branches, with ideas about possible approaches.

Plugging In: Oracle Database 12c Pluggable Databases

Now that DB12c is official, we ALL can start investigating one of the most anticipated features of the Database 12c release – Pluggable Databases. This webinar will introduce the DBA to the concepts behind pluggable databases, the main feature points, along with a live demonstration of working with pluggable databases in Oracle DB12c, and an introduction to Enterprise Manager Express, (EM Express). An open discussion on options to create your own Virtual DB12c environment will be included.

Continuous Integration with Jenkins and Redgate Tools

Continuous integration is not just for application developers. Database code is still code, so the considerable benefits of continuous integration are also available to Oracle database developers. All you need are the right tools. This session will look at how to set up continuous integration using Jenkins and Redgate's Deployment Suite for Oracle tools.

End to End Metrics: Building a Performance Bridge Between the Developer and the DBA

End-to-end metrics bridge the gap between the developer and the DBA, the developer and Oracle, and the DBA and the application. Most applications today are n-tiers using a connection pool on the application tier, which makes them very hard to trace. With a little bit of collaboration between developers and DBAs, tracing can be turned on very easily for your specific application module, a specific user, IP-address, customer, or any other metric of your choice. End-to-end metrics can also be helpful in your development process, and in the day-to-day monitoring of your application.

Built-in Performance Monitoring in Oracle and SQL Server

While the primary focus of both Oracle and SQL Server is on relational database management, there are a number of tools that come with each software package that are focused around monitoring and investigating the performance of the servers. These monitoring tools vary wildly between the two platforms, yet still have a lot in common because of shared fundamentals.

Analyzing and Troubleshooting Oracle Parallel Execution

Oracle parallel execution, a feature of the Enterprise Edition, allows you to automatically distribute the processing of a SQL statement execution among multiple worker processes. This requires additional effort when analyzing and troubleshooting such parallel executions, since it adds complexity that is simply not there with normal serial execution where only a single process is involved.

In this webinar, Randolf Geist provides an overview of what these additional challenges are and how these can be approached.

Managing & Troubleshooting Clusters - 360 Degrees

In this webinar, Syed Jaffar Hussain (Oracle ACE Director and Oracle Magazine Editor's choice award (2011) for 'Technologist of the year, DBA') explains how to manage and troubleshoot various clusterware issues.

Source Control for Oracle

In this session, you will learn how Source Control for Oracle makes the process of checking database changes into SVN or TFS as simple as typing a comment. The demonstration will explain how the tool fits in with the setup of your environment, whether developers are working on shared or distributed databases. See who modified the database and why, and access a history of every change checked in to source control.

How to Become Friends with Developers and Stop Making DBA Stand for "Don't Bother Asking"

The DBA's job is to keep the database stable, accessible, and recoverable from every disaster. The developer's job – with the help of change control – is to implement changes to the database with new features and enhancements. This causes friction, because their roles are fundamentally opposed: the developer's changes can have a major impact on the DBA's goal of stability. How can they ever get along?

This webinar explores how DBAs and developers can share technical skills, bridge gaps in terminology, understand each other better, and ultimately work together more effectively.

Edition Based Redefinition

Upgrading critical applications can be very hard and one of the biggest problems organizations face is the availability of the application during the update. Because of the global nature of applications nowadays we want to achieve 99.99% uptime. Since Oracle Database 11g Release 2, Edition Based Redefinition is available to solve this issue.

In this session, Patrick Barel will introduce the ideas behind Edition Based Redefinition and how it can be used. He will look at tables, editioning views, cross edition triggers, and how PL/SQL code can be changed in the different editions.

Statistics in Oracle and SQL Server

In their third live 'Oracle vs. SQL Server' discussion, Jonathan Lewis (Oracle Ace Director, OakTable Network) and Grant Fritchey (Microsoft SQL Server MVP) will look at statistics in Oracle and SQL Server. Do Oracle and SQL Server gather the same information? What does each optimizer use this information for? And how can Oracle and SQL Server administrators override the defaults for better (or worse) performance? These are just some of the questions that Jonathan and Grant will try to answer in another not-to-be-missed session

Enterprise Manager Command Line Interface for EM12c

This webinar will open the administrator up to the world of Enterprise Manager 12c's Command Line Interface (CLI). Discover advanced features that the EM CLI can manage, not just commands to manage/address the E12c environment, but custom scripts used in SQLPlus, shell, and Perl which can also be utilized through this invaluable tool. The session will demonstrate how EM CLI can ease the management of large database environments and how the commands can address problems the graphical interface can not.

Managing Oracle Schema Deployment for Teams

James Murtagh will look at some of the challenges that face Oracle teams when deploying schema changes through environments, and how Schema Compare for Oracle helps developers meet them. The latest version of Schema Compare for Oracle enables you to store the structure of your schemas in your version control system. Developers can generate creation scripts for each object and store the files in a version control system to share them with the team or revert changes.

Improving Development Processes for Database Teams

An important part of any development process is source code control. For application developers it's unthinkable to work without source control. Database source code control, on the other hand, is not yet common practice. A project with source control ensures that developers are working in collaboration and on the latest codebase, which leads to faster release cycles and fewer mistakes.

Presented by OakTable members Dominic Delmolino and Cary Millsap, the goal of this webinar is to offer practical advice to help database teams work closer and better together.

Comparing Temporary Tables in Oracle and SQL Server

Temporary tables are often used in applications for processes that are difficult to complete in a single pass. They are widely used in SQL Server development and can be local and global. In Oracle, temporary tables are created with a static global definition, but are used to hold temporary local content. But is this the only difference in temporary tables in Oracle and SQL Server? What about the performance impacts/gains for using temporary tables, and does this differ in Oracle and SQL Server?

Once again Jonathan Lewis (Oracle Ace Director, OakTable Network) and Grant Fritchey (Microsoft SQL Server MVP) will host a live discussion on Oracle and SQL Server, this time in relation to temporary tables. Will they agree on some common ground? Or will it be an out and out argument? Either way, be prepared for a lively exchange that will not only entertain, but will teach you key concepts on Oracle and SQL Server.

In this session we will take a look at some of the lesser known PL/SQL packages that come with the Oracle database. Packages like DBMS_ASSERT, DBMS_CRYPTO, and DBMS_PARALLEL_EXECUTE. We will take a look at some of the utility packages that could come in handy such as UTL_NLA and UTL_MATCH, and look briefly at some of the helper functions from UTL_INADDR and UTL_URL. At the end, I will take a look at some of the good packages from the Oracle community that will help you get your work done faster and smarter.

Performance Tuning with ASH and AWR Data

Since their introduction with Oracle 10g, AWR and ASH data have offered the database professional enhanced performance reporting capabilities that previously were only gleaned via statspack and reporting queries. In this webinar, Kellyn Pot'Vin, Senior Technical Consultant at Enkitec, will take you through the requirements, reporting basics, and differences of AWR and ASH.

Doug Burns will take a number of questions asked during his recent webinars on OEM and answer them in more detail. This session presents a unique opportunity to build your knowledge on performance analysis using OEM, based on areas the audience requested more information on.

Oracle Cost Based Optimizer Advanced Session

Building on the previous Cost-Based Optimizer Basics webinar, in this almost zero-slide session we'll explore different aspects of the Cost-Based Optimizer that haven't been covered or only mentioned briefly in the 'basics' session.

This is a continuous live demonstration including topics like: clustering factor, histograms, dynamic sampling, virtual columns, daft data types, and more. If you've ever asked yourself why a histogram can be a threat to database performance and why storing data using the correct data type matters regarding execution plans then this session is for you. It is recommended, although not required, to watch the recording of the 'basics' webinar first.

Falling in Love All Over Again - OEM 12c Performance Page Enhancements

OEM 12c introduces the latest evolutionary stage of the performance pages demonstrated in the previous webinar. This session will demonstrate the new features such as ASH Analytics that make OEM more compelling and useful in more situations.

How I Learned to Love Pictures - OEM Performance Page Fundamentals

Key performance analysis and tuning principles apply regardless of the version of Oracle you're using, but the Oracle 10g Diagnostics Pack instrumentation and related OEM Performance Pages built on these principles to offer a new, more visual, performance analysis approach.

This webinar will focus on live demonstrations of pretty screens, but also on building an understanding of the data behind the screens to improve your ability to use them effectively.

The Evils of Implicit Conversions and other SQL Skullduggery

SQL and PL/SQL are deceptively simple, user-friendly languages, which is great for productivity, but also makes it relatively easy to write bad, non-scalable code. Certain features, in particular, seem to sound an irresistible siren call into a world of Oracle applications that perform poorly and yield unpredictable results.

In this webinar, Tom Kyte, a Senior Technical Architect at Oracle Corporation, and the man behind asktom.oracle.com, takes a look at a few of the worst offenders. With Tom's typically example-driven approach, you'll see first-hand evidence of the damage caused when fundamental features are misused, misunderstood, and implemented badly.

Oracle Heap Tables or SQL Server Clustered Indexes

Oracle and SQL Server may both share a common language, but certain things are handled quite differently. Jonathan Lewis (OakTable Network, Oracle Ace Director) is used to seeing heap tables (almost) everywhere, but Grant Fritchey (Microsoft SQL Server MVP) is used to seeing clustered indexes (almost) everywhere. But which arrangement performs better? And is comparative performance even the right thing to measure?

In this live discussion, these two heavyweights in their respective technology areas will debate the pros and cons of Oracle heap tables and SQL Server clustered indexes. Jonathan and Grant may even play a few unexpected cards during the discussion. Be prepared for a lively exchange which will not only entertain, but will teach you key concepts on Oracle and SQL Server.

Agile Schema Design

In the debates between traditional SDLC ("waterfall") proponents and their Agile counterparts, probably the biggest hinge point is the question of database design. Agile practitioners value "working software over comprehensive documentation" and "responding to change over following a plan". Is Agile, then, the enemy of proper design? What does honoring these values mean to the data design process?

In this live session, Ron Crisco from Method R considers questions like: What is a data design? Do you really need one? Why? Who creates it? When? What's the best format for it? What tools are good for managing it? Can the data design be changed? How? How often? By whom? How do you keep a data design document in sync with your implementation of it?

How to Gather SQL Resource Consumption Metrics in Oracle

SQL is utilized to return data via our applications to service user requests. Whether it's a single customer lookup or a huge month end summary report, the SQL we write must gather the correct data and return it to the user.

Ensuring that the SQL you write can do this in a timely and efficient manner, both now and in the future, requires that you measure and evaluate what resources your query must use.

In this webinar, we'll cover several methods for how to collect data that show you precisely how your SQL consumes resources.

Oracle Cost-Based Optimizer Basics

When it comes to writing efficient queries there are a few key concepts that need to be understood. One of them is the Oracle Cost-Based Optimizer (CBO). Although it's called a cost-based optimizer it's actually not the cost we need to focus on primarily to understand why the optimizer makes certain decisions.

In this webinar, you will learn the basics of the CBO, see why it is crucial that the optimizer's picture of the data fits reality, why cardinality and selectivity estimates matter so much, and which key concepts the optimizer's model surprisingly doesn't cover (yet).

Migrating Single Instance to RAC - 360 Degrees

Oracle database administrators have to cope with numerous challenges when migrating an existing non-cluster environment to a cluster environment. One of the most significant challenges a DBA faces is to migrate/convert an existing single instance to RAC.

Oracle provides several easy methods to carry out the procedure, so it is important to know which method best fits your needs and requirements.

The core objective of this presentation is to give you an overview about different methods for migrating an existing single instance to RAC, and help you find the most suitable one for your situation. The session will also explain how to perform the migration in order to minimize the downtime and to improve (speed up) the migration duration whilst dealing with VLDB.

Oracle 11g New Features for Developers

Join Oracle ACE Director Dan Hotka live online as he discusses new features of Oracle 11g for developers.

This presentation is a must-see for anyone migrating to the new Oracle 11g Database. The focus of this presentation is new features that would be of interest to developers and includes Flashback topics, Database Replay, new SQL syntax options, Result Cache, and PL/SQL enhancements.

Security in the Database is More Than Just Granting Access

In this live webinar, Michelle Malcher (Oracle Ace Director and a representative on the Oracle Security Customer Advisor Council for the Independent Oracle User Group) will present practical ways to look at security and to implement standards and procedures around the database environment to account for the security outside of the users, including secured environments for regulations and compliance.

Oracle 11g provides transparent data encryption at a tablespace level, and this webinar will look at how to implement this option to make it transparent to applications and users.

You will learn some quick steps on securing the database environment, a basic process for applying CPU security patches, managing permissions and roles from test environments to production, and encryption.

Upgrading to Oracle 11gR2

It's a common but relatively tough task for almost every individual Oracle DBA to decide whether to proceed or not with the upgrade whenever Oracle releases a new version. The core objective of this presentation is to share my experience of upgrading four cluster environments with nearly 200 databases to Oracle 11gR2.

The presentation is best suited for all those who are either about to upgrade, planning to upgrade, or in the process of making a decision to upgrade their existing cluster environments to Oracle 11gR2. In addition to how you can make your upgrade a successful project, I will discuss all the problems that we encountered and how we managed to resolve them while upgrading the very complex cluster environments.

Real Developers DO Use Tools

You may've heard the idea that real developers don't need tools, and the mark of a good developer is someone who can hand-code everything. But there are certain tasks where it doesn't make sense to disregard using tools. In particular, critical tasks that need to be completed before an application or database update goes live.

Development models are also changing. Agile methodology is gaining traction as companies look to shorten the development cycle. Therefore reducing the time spent on critical tasks such as smoothing out application inefficiencies or identifying differences between instances of your database is becoming even more crucial.

Applied Rapid Development Techniques for Database Engineers

In this live webinar, Dominic will describe his experience in implementing a rapid refactoring and professional schema management process using standard software development techniques combined with built-in Oracle capabilities.

In particular, Dominic will talk about how to enable database engineers and developers to work in concert while iterating toward a final combined software and database schema product, including database change tracking, automatic generation of schema changesets, and integration alongside software change control. Find out how to make your database development process run just as fast as your Agile development counterparts.

Runtime diagnosis of defects can be an unbearably complicated problem to solve once the application is sealed up and put into production use. But having excellent runtime diagnostics is surprisingly easy if you design the diagnostic features into the application from its inception, as it is being grown, like you would with any other desired application feature.

In this live webinar, Cary Millsap will use his expertise in Oracle development and performance tuning (including as a former VP at Oracle) to demonstrate the benefits of developing applications with diagnostics in mind.

Speed Up Your APEX Development

While building APEX applications is faster than most other technologies, there are still parts of the overall development process that aren't as optimized – specifically securing your applications and managing your schema and code changes. Since both of these tasks are neither easy nor fun, we often devote little or no time to them, as other tasks take priority.

Join us for this free 30 minute webinar, where Scott Spendolini (Oracle ACE Director and Co-Founder of sumneva) and James Murtagh (Redgate Software) present two tools which will reduce your workload, give you more control over managing changes, and give you a sense that you're building secure APEX applications: sumnevaSERT and Schema Compare for Oracle. When used as a part of your development process, these two tools will save you days of work with their ability to automate the mundane and highlight only what needs attention.

Building APEX Plugins 101

One of the hottest new features introduced in Oracle APEX 4 is the plug-in architecture. Plug-ins allow developers to create their own APEX objects in a declarative and supported manner. By creating your own plug-ins you can vastly expand APEX's current functionality to create anything you want in your application. You're only limited by your creativity, so the possibilities are virtually limitless!

Martin Giffy D'Souza has created some of the most popular plug-ins available on the APEX plug-in community page. He has learned a lot about the architecture and what it takes to make a robust plug-in.

In this session, Martin will help get you started with creating your first APEX plug-in. He will also provide you with some tips and useful tools to successfully build plug-ins. This presentation will help you take your out-of-the-box APEX experience to a whole new level.

My Case for Agile Methods

For Cary Millsap the principles of the Agile Manifesto have defined his most commercially and technically successful projects (specifically, the implementation of the Agile Manifesto called Extreme Programming (XP), as explained by Kent Beck).

In fact, further than that, the principles of Agile, implemented as XP, have profoundly enriched Cary's entire life-not just professionally, but personally. The contradiction between the typical DBA's perception of Agile and his own is, thus, stunning.

This session will describe Cary's experiences with Agile values and his implementation of them. Find out what led him to believe passionately that it's XP that will best assure the success of his projects and what has and hasn't worked for him and why.